How The English Monarchy Began

There’s no doubt with us that the British Monarchy is the most iconic and famous Monarchy in the world. Its history, though, is just as iconic as its present. In this article, we explain how England, and then Britain’s Monarchy came to begin to in bite size chunks.

Roman Origins

Prior to any homeland Monarchy in Britain, England was part of the Roman Empire as a Roman colony. Britain was not unknown to the world at the time. As early as the 4th century BC, the Greeks, Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin. The Greeks refer to the Cassiterides, or “tin islands”, and describe them as being situated somewhere near the west coast of Europe. The Carthaginian sailor Himilco is said to have visited the island in the 5th century BC and the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th. But it was regarded as a place of mystery, with some writers even refusing to believe it existed at all.

Britain was “discovered” when Julius Caesar (then a General, later the Roman Emperor) made two ‘expeditions’ to Britain in 55 and 54 BC. Caesar’s invasions didn’t conquer Britain; he left no soldiers behind. Later, Aulus Plautius, another General, came to invade Britain, in the year 43 AD. This time, he intended to conquer it.

He succeeded and from thereon in, Britain was part of the Roman Empire.

The Heptarchy

After around 410 AD, Roman rule in Britain had ended. True Monarchy in Britain was about to begin with the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. After they had begun the takeover of Britain, a new form of governance emerged across the land – the Heptarchy.

Map of the Kingdoms making up the Heptarchy in England

The Heptarchy was a system where England was divided up into 7 major kingdoms (there were more though the 7 were regarded as the main ones). The Kingdoms of Northumbria, Wessex, Mercia, East-Anglia, Essex, Kent and Sussex.

The Heptarchy continued for around 400 years where throughout that time, various Kings of the 7 Kingdoms emerged as de facto leaders of the country. The King of Wessex, Egbert of Wessex, emerged mainly as the dominant King. He controlled Kent, Sussex and Surrey (a minor Kingdom), which was given to his son Æthelwulf, to rule under Egbert as a kind of ‘sub-king’.

First King Of All England

England remained a ‘Heptarchy’ officially until 1066, when William the Conquerer was declared King of England, thus dispelling the English Monarchies, creating one.

Prior to 1066, however, there was a state when all of England’s Kingdoms were overruled by one King. In 927, Æthelstan, King of the West Saxons, was recognised as the first King of the English, whereby all the Kings in the Heptarchy accepted him as their overlord.

Æthelstan’s reign was one of the most important times in English history, politically, as it was when England’s kingdoms were first ruled over in what we now know as Monarchy.

Norman Conquest

The final stage in the foundation of England’s Monarchy as we know it today was the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 when William the Conqueror conquered England and became King of all of England in the way we know today. Prior to William’s conquest, unification of the Heptarchy Kingdoms was almost the case anyway, though William now permanently unified the Kingdoms.